I have been steadfastly in favor of the REC recoil guides and tip-top to dress the blank with the lightest components I can find. But I know some builders believe that the SiC ceramics provide a more "slippery" surface - a lower coefficient of friction and less inertia to overcome.

So I loaded one plastic bag with 10 pennies and clipped it onto a section of fly line (down low) that was threaded through a REC recoil tip-top. I clipped (identical clip) another (indentical) bag and clipped it to the line on the other side of the tip-top (up high). It took 40 pennies to overcome initera and to lift the low 10 penny bag off the ground (by an inch).

I tried the same thing with the Fuji Ti SiC tip-top - 10 pennies on the lower bag and the same 40 pennies on the upper bag. The 40 penny top bag fell like a rock and the lower bag, of course, came up to the original position of the top bag.

Again, with the Fuji Ti SiC tip-top, I then took out 10 pennies from the top bag leaving 30; and added one penny at a time until the lower bag was an inch off the floor. It took another 5 pennies or a total of 35.

So, the REC tip-top took 40 pennies to raise the 10 pennies an inch and it took the SiC tip-top 35 pennies to raise the lower bag 1 inch.

I guess I will be at least trying the Fuji Ti SiC tip-top on my faster, heavier wt rods.

I know this experiment was very crude. But there is a difference between the force needed to overcome inertia. This is not a valid test of their respective coefficients of friction - but I would bet the SiC is lower.

The REC recoil may still allow the best virtues of a blank to come through vs the heavier SiC.

I am not drawing any conclusions here - maybe others performed a more scentific experiment???

Herb

Think the exact form of guide plays a role here? One thing I've noticed about the pics of recoils is that they have that "spring-like" form. The tip I'm looking at may have more friction via larger surface area that contacts the line. All the Recs I've seen in catalogs have that and I always wondered if aside from gathering crud, that double wire form is double friction.

Probably doesn't double the friction per se, but it would be more contact area. Never used them so I'm just throwing the idea out there.

Just for the record, I just replaced the Recoil guides on one of my casting rods. The Recoils replaced were RSPG single foots, 10, 8, 6, 6, 6, 6 with a Fuji TFST 5.5 tip-top. I replaced them with Fuji TLSG’s (SF Ti/sic)10, 8, 5.5 and LSG’s (sic) 4, 3.5, 3.5 and also a 3.5 SF for the tip-top. The rod weight with Recoils was 3.02 ozs. With the Fuji’s it’s 3.01 ozs. Although the rod received heavy use this summer, I can't see any discernable wear in the Recoils.

Joseph,
I only use the single wire tip-tops. Fly rods.
Herb